 CKD DASD are addressed like other Input/Output devices; for System/360 and System/370 DASD are addressed directly, through channels and the associated control units (SCU or Storage Control Unit), initially using three hexadecimal digits, one for channel and two for control unit and device, providing addressing for up to 16 channels, for up to 256 DASD access mechanisms/channel and 4,096 DASD addresses total.Modern IBM mainframes use four hexidecimal digits as an arbitrary subchannel number within a channel subsystem subset, whose definition includes the actual channels, control units and device, providing addressing for up to 65,536 DASD per channel subsytem subset.In practice, physical and design constraints of the channel and of the controllers limited the maximum number of attached DASD attachable to a system to a smaller amount than the number that could be addressed.